The Beggar's Pawn

by John L'Heureux

  “We can have a cup of coffee and talk about it. Now give us a kiss.”

  She gave him a dutiful kiss and they had their coffee and, after an endless hour of frustration and anxiety, they agreed that they could do nothing. Iris was not their child. Alas. Iris would never be their child.

  * * *

  —

  “I THINK YOU’RE VERY SICK,” Claire said.

  She had violated their rules by calling him on the phone. Reginald was pleased.

  “It’s nice to speak to you, too.”

  “It’s one thing to write satire, it’s another to commit libel.”

  “They can’t prove libel. Everything I wrote is true.”

  “It’s slander.”

  “Which is it, libel or slander?”

  “It’s bad writing, to be frank.”

  Reginald was silent at that.

  “You know I’m always frank. I always tell the truth.”

  “It’s not bad writing. It’s . . .”

  “It’s druggie writing.” She waited. “I can hear the drugs in the prose.”

  “Only weed. And sometimes coke.”

  “Are you on the hard stuff? I think you must be on the hard stuff.”

  “And if I was? If I were?”

  “If you were, I’d say come off it. If you weren’t, I’d say you’ve lost perspective on what makes a character real. Read Chekhov. Read Ibsen. Read Kaufman and Hart, for God’s sake. Nobody is simply bad. He has to have some redeeming qualities or we won’t believe him. Your Donald character isn’t even funny. He’s just a product of your anger. Nobody is that simple.”

  Reginald hung up the phone but Claire continued on.

  “Besides,” she said, “it’s one thing for me to tell you about old Poop being stingy and another for you to make him ridiculous. Family always talk about family, and it’s okay for them but not for outsiders. You don’t get to do this. You just don’t.”

  She listened for a response and heard only the dial tone. But she was not done yet.

  “I think you’re very sick,” she said, satisfied for the moment.

  After another cup of tea she phoned Reginald again and when he answered, she said merely, “I’m going to tell my father on you,” and hung up.

  * * *

  —

  HELEN HAD FINALLY WORKED up her courage to ask her boss for full-time work off the books and offered to split the extra money with him. He asked her many questions about how this would play out, who would get what percentage of money, and how they would manage to keep the deal quiet. Their discussion went on for some time. In the end he told her that what she proposed was not only illegal but immoral and so he would have to let her go. But she was a good worker, he said, and she would only be laid off rather than fired, so at some future date she could be hired by Walmart again.

  She reported this to Reginald, who was certain she had mishandled the proposition but he did his best to conceal his anger. The result was she’d be home all the time now until she found another job and they’d have no income at all and he was off drugs for good.

  Christ, was there no end to the misery?

  27.

  Reginald could not concentrate on his writing and he felt guilty for sleeping late and, now that she was unemployed, he found Helen very annoying. She did not seem to know what to do with herself and she was always in the way. She went through the Help Wanted columns every morning before he was up, making lists of jobs and phone numbers, but she was hopelessly unqualified for anything good, and the other jobs—the possible ones—were already taken by the time she phoned about them.

  “Isn’t there something I can do to help you?” she asked.

  Reginald thought, Yes, go away, but instead he said, “Writing is a completely solitary job, you know that.”

  “But I could type or something.”

  “I just need quiet.”

  “I won’t say a word. I’ll just sit here and read.”

  She read for a while and then said, “Can I make you some coffee?”

  “I’m trying to concentrate.” He had been sitting in front of his computer for the past twenty minutes, unable to think of anything to write, in fact unable to think of anything except Helen, exasperatingly quiet, in the same room with him. It was bad enough that she had no job and brought no money home, but it was unendurable to have her sitting here, waiting to be helpful.

  “I’ve got to go for a walk,” he said.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked.

  “I’ve got to think,” he said.

  “I could be quiet and just be with you.”

  “I’ve got to think,” he said again.

  It came to him then that he would make one last appeal to the Hollisses. He would ring their doorbell and confront them and insist they make him a loan. He would explain his situation. He was a good man and a good father. He was a writer. He needed money not just for himself and not for Helen. But for Iris.

  * * *

  —

  CLAIRE HAD DELAYED TELLING her parents the kind of thing Reginald was writing about them and their sons because she was a little embarrassed at getting off so lightly herself. Still, she thought they should know, not so much because he would make fools of them in public but because she intuited from Reginald’s anger that something was very wrong with him. She had seen his kind in the commune and she guessed that, fueled with drugs, he could turn violent with the least provocation. And it was very clear to her that he had it in for David. Poor old Poop, who wouldn’t hurt a flea.

  She could only guess how Maggie and David were getting along without Iris. They had all but adopted the child and now she was cut off from them . . . like their own children. Reginald had a streak of cruelty in him, no doubt about it. She thought about that. Even when he made love, he would hold himself back, depriving her of that deeper pleasure she had earned. And deserved. In justice.

  She decided that Misery and Poop should be alerted to Reginald’s satire and so she sat down and wrote them a quick email.

  Dear Old Things:

  I hope you’re coming along well, Daddy, and I hope Mother is being nice to you. I can only imagine how hard it is for you both without Dickens. I see him in my mind’s eye walking between you each morning and taking off after squirrels and enjoying his naps under the kitchen table. I’m sure you miss him a lot.

  I’m writing to tell you about Reginald’s new project. You ought to know about it because it’s about you. That is, you’re the subject—maybe the object—of his satiric novel about academics. There’s no need to worry because it will never be published, but I think you should know he’s doing it. I’ll attach the part of the manuscript he sent me and you can see what he’s up to. Up to no good, because it’s so one-sided and hateful. But better you should know.

  I’m playing Miss Preen in The Man Who Came to Dinner. She is the nurse to Sheridan Whiteside, the main character. She walks out on him to take a job in a munitions factory, she says, to help in the destruction of the human race. It’s a role I understand well and I intend to make it a big hit.

  This was the friendliest note she’d written them in years, and she reflected that it was easier to be nice to them when they weren’t around than when they were. This was true of her son, too, poor unimaginative Gaius, and—now that she thought of it—it was true of Willow as well. People were nicer at a distance; the further away they were, the nicer they seemed. It struck her that she had begun to identify with Nurse Preen. She was sinking into the role, hating the human race. This was the stuff of great acting.

  She sat back from her computer, breathless once more at the idea of being the real thing. Then she highlighted the file Reginald had sent her and attached it to her email and signed it, “Love you, Claire.” She thought about that for a moment and changed Claire to Chiara and, with a congratulator
y smile, she pressed Send. “There it is, a love note to Misery and Poop.”

  * * *

  —

  REGINALD RANG THE HOLLISSES’ doorbell and waited. He was nervous, of course, but determined. And he had fortified himself with a thin line of coke. He pressed the bell and waited. It was ten in the morning. Surely they were home.

  Though Maggie always opened the door to anyone who rang, for some reason this morning she looked through the peephole and was appalled to see Reginald, looking furious, on her doorstep. She put her hand on the doorknob and was about to open the door when the thought crossed her mind that no good could come of this. She stood there, frozen.

  Reginald rang the doorbell again and waited. He would stand his ground. He would wait them out.

  Maggie stood, silent, on the other side of the door.

  Reginald opened the screen door and put his hand on the doorknob. He could not bring himself to turn it. What if the door was unlocked? What if it opened?

  Inside, Maggie heard the screen door open. What if he tried the door? She looked down and saw that it was unlocked. They never locked the door during the day. She blushed, embarrassed. But why should she be embarrassed? She was determined suddenly to keep him out. She leaned hard against the door.

  Reginald turned the doorknob and felt the door move inward slightly. He pulled his hand away as if the knob were on fire. So they were home, the selfish bastards, and would not open to him.

  Maggie closed her eyes and waited.

  Reginald, angry and confused, gave up and went away. Maggie leaned against the door exhausted.

  A minute later David came out of his study and said, “Someone’s at the door.”

  “It’s nobody,” Maggie said.

  It wasn’t until lunchtime that she calmed down enough to tell him what had happened.

  “Incredible!” David said. “We should remember to lock the door from now on, even during the day.”

  “What are we coming to in this world?” Maggie said.

  “The end, eventually,” David said and went back to his study to continue writing about Gissing: the early, miserable years.

  * * *

  —

  MAGGIE AND DAVID SHARED the same email address and, since David was occupied with Gissing, Maggie got to read Claire’s email first. She wondered if she could erase it somehow before David saw it and had another stroke, but she knew that erasing was futile because everything got through to him anyhow. And she knew he would eventually have to face the fact that Reginald was writing about them. A satiric novel, no less. In the abstract it was just a silly idea but this email was not abstract. David/Donald was a monster of selfishness and she was simply a self-centered idiot who doted on her dog. Poor Dickens. Why did Dickens have to be dragged into it? But at least Dickens was safely dead. It was David she worried about.

  She waited until he came out of his study, tired, blinking a little, as if he were emerging from a cave.

  “How did it go?” she said, but before he could respond she told him everything: Claire was in The Man Who Came to Dinner, playing a nurse who hated the human race, and—by the way—Reginald was writing a nasty book in which they were featured players. Characters. He was actually putting words on paper. He had already put them on paper or at least on the computer screen. It was on Claire’s email—a selection from the novel—and he shouldn’t get upset because it was ridiculous. It was simply ridiculous. Ridiculous! Maybe he should wait to read it until he calmed down.

  David said he was as calm as he was ever going to be and went to his study to read Claire’s email. He came back, pale, defeated, a half hour later.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “You’re right.”

  Maggie didn’t know what to make of this. She had expected rage.

  “Moreover he’s a terrible writer.” He thought for a moment. “Do you think he wants to extort money with this thing?”

  “I have a confession,” she said. “When he returned the second loan, the four hundred dollars, he was short by two hundred.” She could tell that David did not understand. “I should have told you at the time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lies make everything wrong,” she said. “Let’s just ignore him.”

  And so they talked for an hour and had some nice hot tea and talked for another hour and finally decided to ignore Reginald’s novel and Reginald himself. It was a decision they arrived at easily. Living with it would be another thing. And living without Iris.

  * * *

  —

  HELEN FELT HELPLESS. Unable to find a new job and caught up in her husband’s desperation, she had left innumerable handwritten notes at neighborhood doors offering to clean house, care for pets, run errands, et cetera, but of course everyone in Professorville already had cleaners and pet carers and errand runners. There was no response to her notes. And she had nobody to turn to. She thought of approaching the Hollisses to ask for help but she realized that Reginald would regard this as interfering in his life and she would never dare do that.

  He was a changed man. The drugs were making him distant, hostile, and she had begun to fear him. He was no longer writing and he ate almost nothing. He was silent most of the time and when he spoke to her at all, it was with a kind of resentment. She had to find a job. She had to get him some money.

  Suddenly, for no reason she could think of, she was tempted to read his book. Back when he had worked on it regularly—weeks ago—he had printed out each day’s work and put it in a folder beneath a pile of books on the floor next to his computer desk. It was understood that his writing must never be touched, but just to be safe he piled the books on top as a kind of deterrent. She had been offended when he first did this, since surely he knew she would never violate his privacy. But now that he was drifting from her into a terrifying world she recognized as craziness, she reached out to his writing as some kind of contact with the old Reginald, the loving man she married.

  She moved the books carefully, in a single pile, so she could put them back exactly as they had been and he’d never know what she had done. She opened the folder and took the first page in her hand. It was the title page: What Is Not Being Said. The next was the dedication page: To Helen. Tears came to her eyes. She was tempted to go on to the novel itself but seeing the dedication so surprised and upset her that she closed the folder at once and returned it to its place on the floor beside the desk. She positioned the little pile of books exactly as it had been. Two minutes later, though, consumed by curiosity about this wonderful manuscript, she returned to the folder and began reading.

  * * *

  —

  MEANWHILE REGINALD RANG the Hollisses’ doorbell again and waited. It was a beautiful warm October afternoon, a Saturday, and he had Iris by his side. Surely they would open to her. She had begged not to come but he insisted. She could do at least this much for the family, he said.

  A hard week had passed since his last attempt on the Hollisses and Reginald was looking worse each day. He had been taking his long nightly walks to East Palo Alto and sleeping late in the morning and subsisting for the most part on coffee and marijuana since the coke was all gone.

  He stood beside Iris and rang the bell once more. They had been standing there for what seemed an hour. He checked his watch. Three minutes had passed.

  He opened the screen and knocked on the inside door. He knocked a second time and then he tried the doorknob. It turned and, with a slight pressure, he pushed the door open. He stepped inside, holding Iris by the hand.

  “We shouldn’t,” Iris said.

  They moved from the foyer to the living room, where they could look out into the back garden and see Maggie and David reclining on lounge chairs looking out over the pool.

  So they hadn’t heard the bell after all. A good sign.

  “Please, no,” Iris said softly.
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  Reginald, still holding Iris’s hand, moved through the living room to the kitchen and out the back door to the patio. The door slammed behind them and David turned to see what was happening. Maggie sat forward in her chair.

  “What’s this?” David said, but it was not a question. He looked at Reginald in disbelief. The man looked years older, his beard was graying and straggly, he was bent over holding Iris’s hand. He could be sixty. And David could scarcely recognize Iris.

  Reginald suddenly found himself with nothing to say. He stood there beside the pool looking at them. The Hollisses. His salvation.

  “You’ve got to help me,” he said.

  “How did you get in here?” David asked.

  “You’ve got to help.”

  “How did you get in?” His voice was angry, indignant.

  “The door was unlocked. We rang the bell.”

  David looked at Maggie and said nothing. She had forgotten to lock the door.

  “There’s no money. There’s no food. There’s nothing. You’ve got to loan me a thousand dollars.”

  “We made our last loan a couple months ago. I told you, no more loans.”

  Iris, who had been standing next to her father with her eyes cast down, now looked up at David and then at Maggie. She flushed red.

  “Nine hundred then. I need food for my family.”

  David looked at Maggie and saw no sign of what he ought to do. They had reached a terrible moment and their lives depended on his doing what was right. The money had ceased to be the issue. What mattered now was principle.

  “I’m sorry,” David said.

  “I’m begging you.”

  “Please go before you make this worse than it is already.”

  Suddenly Reginald lost control. Tears poured down his face and he began to babble. “You have everything and we have nothing. You call yourself Christians and you’ve never heard of being your brother’s keeper. You keep it all for yourself. It’s a crime against justice. Claire knows what you are. Please, please, for my wife and daughter, please loan me money. You’re the last place I can turn to.”